He has been willing to accept some restrictions on abortion, and goes so far as to suggest that the Supreme Court should have left the matter in the hands of state governments.
In this respect, his stand is reminiscent of the one that Lincoln's nemesis, Stephen Douglas, took on the issue of slavery — a states' rights position that ignores the issue of constitutional principle at stake every time the Declaration's premise of equal unalienable rights is violated. Thompson appears to favor an end to Roe v. Wade, but without acknowledging the nascent child's moral and constitutional right to life, accepting the notion that it would be enough to return the issue to the discretion of the states. This ignores the enormous moral damage that has resulted from the Roe v. Wade decision.
Prior to the era in which Roe v. Wade came before the Supreme Court, every state in the Union prohibited abortion. During that era, a small minority agitated for the right to kill children in the womb, but with few exceptions, state after state reaffirmed the illegality of abortion. When their state-based efforts failed, the agitating minority took action through the federal courts. At that point, the issue of right was joined at the national level, and wrongly decided by the Supreme Court. This unleashed a regime of enforced abortion rights that has resulted in the deaths of scores of millions, in violation of the Constitution's principles and stated goal.
This purposefully-established national regime of injustice, which subverts the fundamental principle of constitutional self-government, has corrupted the moral understanding and expectations of many of our citizens. The notion that we can simply turn the clock back without addressing the corruption of national principle and conscience that it has produced is either naïvely irresponsible or shrewdly malicious. Having poisoned the soil in which it is planted, can we leave the roots of our national liberty to shrivel and die?
When we get past posturing and politically-contrived "pro-life" indicators, the simple fact is that Fred Thompson does not defend the moral and constitutional right to life of the child in the womb. He speaks from no moral conviction. He will therefore have no effective argument against "abortion rights" advocates who will surely decry his willingness to risk forcing women at the state level to endure labor against their will and at great emotional cost, in order to satisfy an arguable procedural objection to the Supreme Court's authority on matters of human rights.
If the only objection to abortion involved this jurisdictional dispute, I too might question the wisdom of usurping a choice fraught with such deep personal consequences. In fact, however, the issue involved goes to the very heart and soul of our claim to liberty. Asking people to accept a difficult personal discipline out of respect for the child's right to life is no less justifiable than asking them to accept the discipline of military life — risking limb, and life and all — to preserve the liberty of the people. The sovereignty of the people cannot survive unless in their exercise of personal sovereignty, every individual maintains the integrity of society's moral and political foundations.
We must ask women to respect the right to life of the helpless child in the womb, so that all of us together can demand that superior ability, or wealth, or military might respect the rights of the people, who might otherwise sink back to the level of the human masses throughout history, who cowered submissively when faced with such proofs of power. As patriots had to give their lives to build our freedom, women and men must live their lives so as to keep it.
What Fred Thompson and all Republicans like him fail to appreciate is that the issue of abortion is just one cutting edge of the assault on personal sovereignty, an assault that aims ultimately to destroy the sovereignty of the people. The aim of statesmanship, therefore, is not just to deal with the issue, but to restore the moral basis of our sovereignty as we do so. Sadly, it is clear that Fred Thompson's script for the presidency includes nothing of the kind.
